Buttoned Up (Button Box Mystery) Read online

  “Are you kidding?” The snack brightened Nev’s spirits. He grinned. There was a blob of salsa on his green plaid tie and I dabbed it up with a paper towel, then wet another one and got rid of the tomatoey residue. Well, most of it, anyway. “If you could go back to the church one of these days and do that for me, that would be fabulous.”

  “So you think there’s a button connection? That someone wanted one of the buttons in the exhibit?”

  Nev wrinkled his nose. “Not really. I mean, if that was the case, why not just grab the button? Why kill the crazy artist? But I would like to cover all the bases.”

  “You think it’s far more likely that someone had it in for Forbis?” He crunched into a chip. I chewed thoughtfully. “Why do people kill other people?” I asked Nev. Then, just so he didn’t think I was being too philosophical, I added, “I don’t mean because the killer hates the person, or the killer’s evil or anything. I’m talking more about motive.”

  “That’s easy enough.” Nev settled on one of the high stools at the table. “Revenge, jealousy, greed, lust, hate. Motives are living proof that the deadly sins really exist.”

  “So we should ask ourselves who wanted revenge against Forbis.”

  Nev shrugged. But then, his mouth was full so there wasn’t much he could say.

  “Or who was jealous.” To me, this sounded like a better motive, what with the fact that we were dealing with the art community. As a collector, I was on the very fringes. I sometimes sold my buttons to artists and discerning crafters and I’d seen how their vision of their art—not to mention some of their delusions of fame and fortune—could make their egos inflate to the size of hot-air balloons. “If there was another artist who’s ideas Forbis was stealing, or who thought Forbis was getting all the attention he should have been getting—”

  “Another artist who glues billions of buttons onto stuff like couches and drums?” Nev’s pointed question gave me all the answer I needed.

  “Greed, then. Richard said that since he started in on button art, Forbis was making money. Someone could have wanted it.”

  “Absolutely.” I was so grateful to have finally hit on something Nev considered feasible, I smiled. “We’re looking into Forbis’s bank accounts, his expenses. All that stuff.”

  “What about lust?” Honestly, I had no intention of bringing up Evangeline so Nev shouldn’t have looked so uncomfortable. Just in case I imagined it, I ignored it completely and answered my own question. “Forbis was a little old for a jealous lover.”

  “But we’ll check that out, too,” he assured me.

  “Speaking of which . . .”

  “Josie!” Nev groaned. “I told you there’s nothing to talk about, not when it comes to Evangeline.”

  Since Evangeline wasn’t what I was going to talk about, I froze. But then, I guess that could easily have been because there was suddenly a block of ice in my stomach. My words felt wooden. My legs suddenly wouldn’t hold me, and I took a seat, too. “I wasn’t talking about Evangeline.” A little niggle of worry ate away at my composure. Maybe Evangeline was what we should have been talking about. “I was talking about Laverne and Richard. He said that back in college, they were a couple.”

  “Oh.” Nev took another drink of ginger ale.

  Sometimes, silence can be just as loud as any noise. And far more uncomfortable.

  I got up and refilled our plates with chips.

  “Maybe there’s some symbolism for Forbis’s body being found where it was,” I said, desperate to say something, anything, that would relieve the thundering silence and get our conversation back on track. “You know, in the arms of that spirit who grinds up people and eats them. And with those buttons on his eyes and mouth.”

  “Well, I’m no profiler . . .” No, he wasn’t and I wasn’t either, but there was no doubt Nev was as grateful for the change of subject as I was. Some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders. “My guess is the buttons on his eyes and mouth pretty much are a giveaway. You don’t just do that to someone, even someone you dislike enough to murder. Not unless you’re trying to send a message.”

  “Forbis wasn’t looking. He wasn’t seeing. He refused to open his eyes.” Theorizing, I dragged a chip through the salsa even though I knew I wasn’t going to eat it. After Nev’s comment about Evangeline, I wasn’t so hungry anymore. “He said too much. He didn’t say enough. Button your lip!” I brightened. “That’s about as literal as you can get.”

  Nev finished off a chip. “But what was he supposed to button his lip about? It sure wasn’t buttons because, I swear, nothing could make Forbis stop talking about or working with buttons. I did some online research, too, and it’s pretty clear, the guy was a publicity machine. Any time he got the chance, he showed up at regional button shows and county fairs. He loved being the center of attention, and according to his agent, he just got another huge shipment of buttons in so it sounds like he had another crazy notion for more crazy artwork. Not that buttons are crazy,” he added a little too quickly.

  “I know what you mean,” I assured him and I did, honest, even though I had to ungrit my teeth before I said, “You don’t need to apologize. What we need to figure out . . .” I drummed my fingers against the table. “One of the things we need to do is figure out who Forbis was arguing with when he first showed up at the art show.”

  Nev had a full mouth so he nodded and held up one finger as a way of telling me to hold the thought. While I did, he took his notebook out of his pocket and scanned through the pages. “We know it wasn’t Laverne,” he said, “because she was with us when we heard the fight break out.”

  “And Richard?”

  Nev looked through a few more of the pages. “After you left the church yesterday, I asked him. He said he’d heard the argument, too, and went to try and run interference, but he never did find Forbis or see who he was fighting with.”

  “Which leaves . . .” I picked up the guest list Nev had brought along and let the four single-spaced pages drift back onto the table. “A hundred or so other people.”

  “And the church staff,” he reminded me. “Because Reverend Truman and Bob the maintenance guy and anyone else who was connected with the church isn’t on the guest list and they were all in the building, too. And what about that journalist guy . . .” He skimmed through his notes and when he found what he was looking for, he stabbed the page with one finger. “What about this Gabriel Marsh? Journalists can be annoying. I mean, if he was asking Forbis questions that were too personal, that could explain a fight.”

  “Except . . .” I thought back to my own encounter with Gabriel on the front steps of the church. Though we hadn’t been able to clearly hear the person Forbis was fighting with, I couldn’t help but think we might have picked up on the accent. “He’s English,” I told Nev.

  “And English people are too well-behaved to get into arguments?”

  It was Nev’s idea of a joke and, actually, it wasn’t a bad one. As I’d quickly learned once I started dating Nev, cops are a literal bunch. Just the fact that he was able to joke around after working more than twenty-four hours straight said something about a sense of humor I wasn’t always sure he had.

  “I was thinking more like if it was Marsh, we might have heard his accent, but I guess not.” I dismissed the possibility with a sigh. “We heard Forbis, but not the person he was fighting with. Too bad. Then we’d know if it was a man or a woman.”

  “And how do you know this Marsh guy is English?” Nev asked.

  “When I ran after Forbis . . .” I popped open the top on my can of diet soda. “I found Marsh already outside looking for him. But of course, if Forbis was up in the choir loft the whole time, that explains why we never saw him. Unless . . .” This was something I hadn’t thought about earlier. “Maybe Forbis didn’t go upstairs when he ran off. Maybe he was up there way earlier. You know, like before any of us even got there for the show. Or maybe that’s where he was when he was arguing with . . . with whoever.”


  Nev shook his head. He was a couple weeks past needing a haircut and a thick strand of his sandy-colored hair flopped over his forehead. “If Forbis was having that fight up in the choir loft, I’m pretty sure we would have known it. The acoustics in that church are really good. As for him being up there before anyone arrived at the show, after what you found up there, I did check that out. According to Richard, he and Forbis came over from the hotel together in a cab. They arrived at the church just as the doors opened for show attendees. Forbis waited in Laverne’s office so he could make his grand entrance. If he’d gone up into the loft, we would have seen him cut through the church.”

  “So that is where he went when he raced off the altar. But why? Unless there was someone waiting up there for him?”

  One corner of Nev’s mouth pulled tighter. “There were signs of other footprints in the dust. Unfortunately, some of them were yours.”

  I hadn’t thought of this, and my stomach soured. “Sorry,” I said.

  Nev finished his ginger ale and took the can over to my recycling container. “You couldn’t have known, and besides, it doesn’t really matter. We were able to eliminate yours because you were wearing heels. Obviously, Forbis wasn’t, and neither was the other person who was up there. The prints look like they were made by men’s dress shoes.”

  “So someone was up there with him.”

  “And maybe it wasn’t an accidental encounter. Maybe Forbis had arranged to meet that someone there.”

  “Could that someone be the killer?”

  I knew Nev hated not to have answers, so I could just about feel his pain when he had to admit that he had no idea.

  “If Forbis’s champagne was poisoned . . .” I said, but Nev stopped me.

  “We don’t know that yet. And I’m not going down that road until we do. We won’t know the cause of death until the medical examiner completes his autopsy. When I sent that officer out after Bob yesterday, he couldn’t find hide nor hair of the guy, but I finally tracked him down later in the afternoon. He confirms what Laverne told us. He not only mopped up the champagne, he used bleach to do it. If there was any evidence on the floor, that was sure to eliminate it.”

  Nev took his empty plate and tossed it in the trash. “Thanks for dinner,” he said.

  My plate wasn’t empty, but I threw it away, too. “That’s dinner? You need more than that if you’re going to keep going.”

  “There’s a vending machine back at the station.” Nev made it sound like this was no big deal and that whatever he got there was an actual substitute for real food. Knowing his schedule, I was afraid that many times, it actually was. “But tomorrow night . . .” When I walked past, he stopped me and pulled me into his arms. “If I’ve made any progress on the case, maybe I can take some time and we can do dinner tomorrow night? Nothing fancy. Just someplace quiet where we can talk.”

  I felt a smile relieve some of the tension that had been building in me ever since Nev dropped the E word. “I could be talked into making marinara.”

  Nev loves my marinara. He grinned and kissed me quick. “I’ll bring the garlic bread.

  “And I’ve got the fixings for salad.”

  “This does sound like a real meal. And that calls for a bottle of wine. I’ll take care of that, too.”

  Our conversation sounded just like all our talks did in the old days (that is B.E. . . . Before Evangeline) and smiling, I leaned my head against Nev’s chest.

  And nearly jumped out of my skin when his phone rang close to my ear.

  “Sorry.” He stepped back and took the phone out of his shirt pocket. “I’ve got the ringer set loud so I make sure I hear it.”

  He answered and this time, he didn’t turn his back on me, and while he talked, I cleaned up the chips and the salsa.

  “Really?” Nev asked the person on the phone. “You’re sure about that?”

  Of course I was curious about who he was talking to and why there was suddenly a vee of worry between Nev’s eyes, but I didn’t want to look too nosy. Or too much like I was worried it might be Evangeline. I grabbed my purse, and since Nev was wandering as he talked, I followed him out to the front of the shop, turning off lights and my computer as I went.

  By the time he hung up, we were at the front door and I flipped the sign in the window that said the Button Box was now officially closed.

  Even then, Nev didn’t budge. His head cocked to the side, he stood at the door, and didn’t say a word.

  “Bad news?” I asked.

  Nev shook himself back to reality. “Weird news.” He tucked away his phone. “That was Manny from the medical examiner’s office. They finished their autopsy on Forbis.”

  “It was poison, wasn’t it?” I was so sure of it, I would have bet a boatload of buttons. “And dang, too bad Bob cleaned up that spilled champagne so well or you’d have even more evidence.”

  “No, it wasn’t poison.” Nev put a hand on the door. “Manny said there was no sign of poison or drugs or even alcohol in Parmenter’s system except for that little bit from the champagne. He also said from what they could tell, Forbis never had previous heart trouble.”

  Like I said, I was curious. I leaned forward, urging him to spill the beans. “And heart trouble is important because . . . ?”

  “Because if Forbis did have heart trouble, they would have seen old damage. At least that’s what Manny said. He also said something about . . .” Nev paused to think and I knew he wanted to get the information right. He’s nothing if not a ducks-in-a-row kind of guy.

  “Manny said something about ventricular fibrillation and I don’t understand it completely so don’t ask me to explain until I find out more. But he said that’s what killed Forbis. Ventricular fibrillation.”

  “He had a heart attack?” I suppose this should have made me feel better; we weren’t dealing with murder. But there was still the matter of Congo Savanne and those buttons on Forbis’s eyes and mouth. If he’d died of natural causes and someone came along and did that to the body . . .

  I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. “We’re not talking murder?”

  Nev pressed his lips together. “I wish I knew,” he said. “Because Manny said . . . well, what Manny said is that if he had to make an educated guess, he’d say that Forbis Parmenter was scared to death.”

  Chapter Six

  Drums pounded in the distance.

  They echoed all around me, and I wasn’t sure if I was running toward the sound or away from it. I only knew that each beat reverberated in my body. My heart thumped. My blood throbbed. I couldn’t catch my breath.

  The drums kept up the incessant beat.

  And I kept running.

  It was dark and wherever I was, it wasn’t any place I was familiar with. There were plenty of trees, and a path so thick with leaves, my footsteps were muffled. But this wasn’t Lincoln Park over near the lake or Seward Park in the Old Town neighborhood where the Button Box is located. Somehow, I knew that instinctively. This was strange territory. Foreign and forbidding. I was lost, and scared out of my wits.

  When I raced down the path, cold wisps of fog swirled around me, ghosts in the darkness. They closed behind me, brushing over me with their skeleton fingers.

  Behind me, somewhere back in the darkness, something thudded on the path. Or maybe it was just the sound of my stomach hitting bottom and bouncing back up again when I realized there was someone just a dozen paces in back of me. Someone following me. Someone closing in.

  I picked up the pace. Or at least I tried to. My legs were leaden and each time I lifted a foot and plunked it down again, it felt as if I’d never have the energy for another step.

  The drums, though . . . the drums never stopped.

  They hammered in my ears and shivered in my breastbone. They drowned out the noises behind me and I cursed each and every beat. The drums were so loud, I couldn’t tell if I was still being followed.

  I could stop. I could look. I would know for sure then.

 
My logical self knew this was the best plan. But I couldn’t take the chance. This was no time for reasoning. This was all about animal instinct, and mine told me that if my pursuer was still back there, I couldn’t waste a step.

  One foot in front of the other. One breath, then a second, and my lungs were on fire.

  Behind me, the air stirred, and the chill turned molten against the back of my neck.

  The drumbeats deafened me.

  Rap, rap, rap.

  The sound penetrated my subconscious, mingling at first with those drums in the distance, then gaining strength and volume.

  Rap, rap, rap.

  My eyes were weighted down with bricks, and I had to fight to open them.

  Rap, rap, rap.

  It took me a minute to realize I was sitting in the plump and comfy armchair in my living room, right where I’d drifted off. The reading lamp on the table next to me was still on, and the art magazine I was scanning for any news about Forbis was still open on my lap.

  I was home, and safe.

  Like a swimmer coming up for air after being underwater too long, I gulped in a breath and let it out in a whoosh, then pulled in another and another.

  It was a dream. All a dream. No one was chasing me, and there were no drums.

  Rap, rap, rap.

  But there was someone at my door.

  Even though it felt like I was moving through quicksand, I managed to scoop the magazine off my lap and stand, and when the room did a one-eighty and my knees buckled, I grabbed the chair to steady myself. A few more quick, steadying breaths and I started toward the door, massaging my throbbing temples with my index fingers.